What next for India-Pakistan relations?

Arab News

22-05-2025

https://arab.news/8ppd3
The four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan was their sixth crisis in the past 25 years. Every crisis has been more dangerous than the previous one and left their troubled relations in a worse state. Diplomatic engagement has been difficult to resume and the impasse has almost always deepened. Only after the 2001-2002 military standoff did the two neighbors manage to pursue a real peace process through the 'composite' dialogue, whose contours, however, were set earlier in 1997.
The 'composite' dialogue was predicated on eight baskets of issues which were Kashmir, peace and security (including CBMs), terrorism, Siachen, Sir Creek, trade and economic cooperation, water projects and promoting friendly exchanges. While formal dialogue proceeded on these issues and disputes, a promising back channel during the Pervaiz Musharraf-Manmohan Singh period pursued negotiations on the Kashmir issue (2004-2007). This produced the framework for an agreement on the core issue that long divided the two countries – Kashmir. Although both sides chose to cast this as an interim agreement it was the most significant breakthrough in their relations in decades. But the deal never saw the light of day and became a casualty of political upheaval in Pakistan in 2008. It represented a lost opportunity but served as a reminder of what purposeful negotiations could achieve.
Subsequent governments in both countries however showed no interest in pursuing that formula. Serious negotiations were never held after that on Kashmir. The advent of Narendra Modi's hard-line government in 2014 made it impossible. Dialogue even on other issues was interrupted time and again. And the composite dialogue never resumed after 2012. Backchannel communication in 2020, following the 2019 crisis, eventually produced the re-commitment by both neighbors in February 2021 to observe a ceasefire on the Line of Control, in line with a 2003 understanding.
Returning to the status quo ante is highly improbable not least because while the military confrontation has ended, the coercive diplomatic steps India has taken have not been reversed.
Maleeha Lodhi
But that behind-the-scenes conversation made no headway on any other issue or produce a thaw in the relationship. Relations in fact, had ruptured in August 2019 when India illegally annexed, bifurcated and absorbed the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir into the Indian Union in violation and defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. Delhi's action, accompanied by a sweeping set of repressive measures, prompted Pakistan to suspend trade and downgrade diplomatic ties. India's stance that the Kashmir 'problem' had been 'resolved' and there was nothing to negotiate with Pakistan presented a formidable obstacle to the revival of any dialogue. New Delhi in any case showed no interest in diplomatic re-engagement believing that an absence of dialogue hurt Pakistan and not India.
This is the fraught background against which the crisis erupted between the two countries on May 7 when India attacked Pakistan after the Pahalgam terrorist incident and Pakistan retaliated. This was the first time they attacked each other's mainland with missile and airstrikes as well as deployed new generation technology and weapons including armed drones. Never before had they edged so close to all-out war after becoming nuclear weapon states.
US diplomatic intervention defused the crisis and helped the two countries forge a ceasefire. An uneasy truce now prevails between India and Pakistan with a fragile ceasefire being implemented in phases. Confidence building measures are being taken to reduce the 'level of alertness.' But 'normalcy' is not expected to return anytime soon, and there is little immediate possibility of talks between them with Prime Minister Modi already ruling them out by saying talks and terror can't go together.
In this backdrop, three scenarios can be postulated for the near term. The first is the most unstable in which an intense war of words continues and in which the situation has the potential of relapsing into an escalation of tensions. In this acrimonious standoff, the diplomatic deadlock persists and there is no dialogue or even backchannel communication. Tensions run high with mutual accusations of violations of the ceasefire. This heightens the risk of another crisis erupting, especially if there is another terrorist incident, which Prime Minister Modi said in his post-ceasefire speech India would respond to militarily. Meanwhile, US interest wanes as Washington's focus shifts elsewhere to other conflicts and issues. This is the most dangerous and volatile scenario.
The second scenario would resemble the pre-May 2025 state of play, which means a no-war, no-peace situation prevails with minimal diplomatic interaction, that too just on practical issues, and intermittent contact at the technical level between the DGMO's of the two countries. Diplomatic representation remains downgraded while tensions continue at a relatively low level of intensity. The ceasefire on the LoC holds for the most part and military forces/assets are not maintained at a high alert level. However, returning to the status quo ante is highly improbable not least because while the military confrontation has ended, the coercive diplomatic steps India has taken have not been reversed. The most consequential of these is the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty.
The best-case but unlikeliest scenario is for formal dialogue to resume, even if not immediately, with the two countries adopting a problem-solving approach to their disputes and trying to find a middle ground to address their differences. They also seek to consciously bring down tensions. Result-oriented dialogue opens space for normalization of several aspects of the relationship even as disagreements continue on the more prickly or intractable issues. In this scenario, a mechanism is established to manage tensions to prevent them from spiralling out of control if a crisis emerges. This is the scenario urged by the compulsions of the region's nuclearization, especially as strategic dynamics between the two adversaries are so unstable and given the risks of miscalculation in an uncertain deterrence environment. It is also the only model of relations that can deliver durable peace. But while logic calls for this, there is zero possibility of this scenario materialising in the short term.
Therefore, the outlook for India-Pakistan relations remains clouded by uncertainty with little prospect of any thaw in the troubled relationship.
– Maleeha Lodhi is a former Pakistani ambassador to the US, UK & UN. She posts on X with @LodhiMaleeha